Geometric group presentations
A group presentation is said to be geometric if it is associated to a Heegaard diagram of a compact, connected 3-manifold \(M^3\) or, equivalently, to a spine of \(M^3\). The interest for such presentations arose from their relations with the Poincaré conjecture and with the Andrews-Curtis conjecture. So, many authors -- interested in the above conjectures -- found various geometricity criteria concerning the case of \(M^3\) orientable: for example, \textit{L. Neuwirth} [Math. Proc. Camb. Philos. Soc. 64, 603-613 (1968; Zbl 0162.27603)], \textit{R. P. Osborne} and \textit{R. S. Stevens} [Am. J. Math. 96, 454-471 (1974; Zbl 0299.57001); Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 234, 213-243 (1977; Zbl 0375.57001)], and \textit{J. M. Montesinos} [Math. Proc. Camb. Philos. Soc. 94, 109-123 (1983; Zbl 0535.57007)]. The present paper yields a new combinatorial criterion to test the geometricity of group presentations, which holds also for \(M^3\) nonorientable: it is obtained by making use of the manifold representation theory via edge-coloured graphs (see [\textit{M. Ferri}, \textit{C. Gagliardi} and \textit{L. Grasselli}, Aequationes Math. 31, 121-141 (1986; Zbl 0623.57012)] for a survey about the subject). More precisely, to each balanced presentation \(\Phi\), the author associates a 2-complex \(H_\Phi\) and, by means of edge-coloured graphs constructed from \(H_\Phi\), gives combinatorial conditions to verify when \(H_\Phi\) is a spine of a (closed) 3-manifold \(M^3\).
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